Perpetual
by a mountain of gideon's scones
Summary: "His name's Myrnin—but sometimes he doesn't remember that. Sometimes, when all he wants to do is to rip the head off the nearest human, when he wants to drain every person he comes into contact with, he can't recall anything other than how to kill, and this scares him when he comes round." This side of Myrnin doesn't bode well for Claire's life. SORT OF CLYRNIN, WARNING INSIDE


This is a fanfic for **Writer Rider Dirty Thirties, **though very belated

_**WARNING**_: this is at the VERY top end of the T rating as it contains themes that are very, for want of a better word, _dark_. It's an attempt to show that Myrnin is very, very conflicted, and that if the wrong side of him wins out, the consequences are severe.

If this doesn't sound like it's something you should be reading, disappear now. I don't want you to read something you may be uncomfortable with.

WORD COUNT: 6760

* * *

It's a daily struggle between the monster and the man, an attempt by one to gain overall supremacy over the other for a period of time; however, the victory never sustains itself. The day after, or the day after that, or perhaps even a week after that, the contest begins once more, the man struggling to gain control over the monster, the monster fighting to be the man's controller.

Sometimes, the man wins out continually, and for months and months at a time he can live in peace with no internal threats—a particular memory of this is when he resided with Amelie, and he refused to entertain the possibility of hurting her—and yet at other times, he struggles to keep his mind for more than a few minutes at a time. The battle for sanity seems to consume so much of him at times that he can barely focus on the science, can scarcely succeed in completing the action Amelie wants him to do.

His name's Myrnin—but sometimes he doesn't remember that. Sometimes, when all he wants to do is to rip the head off the nearest human, when he wants to drain every person he comes into contact with, he can't recall anything other than how to kill, and this scares him when he comes round. He could hurt anyone he knows, even Amelie, and it's the reminder that his insanity killed Ada and all the other assistants—he _can't_ blame the disease wholly; if he hadn't suffered the disease perhaps they would have survived…perhaps not—that makes him shy away from contact with others when he fears he could be turning. When he isn't, however, when he's wholly himself, he does everything he wishes he could do continually: irritate Oliver; have tea with Amelie; develop scientific ideas which could make his race _truly_ great.

And then there's Claire.

As he takes a short moment to sit down in a chair and reflect on life, Myrnin the man realises just _how_ much he requires the girl to be in his life; he's grown to rely on her completely. She knows things about him that not even Amelie does, and he knows that she trusts him as well—perhaps not as much, given what he is, but still, she trusts him. If Myrnin had to explain what makes the struggle to remain Myrnin the man more bearable, in the past he would say that the science pulls him back; now, it's the science _and_ Claire that makes him fight harder than ever to get back when the darkness pulls him under.

Unfortunately, the dark side of him, the hereditary disease his father passed him down, the illness exacerbated by the monster put inside of him through his turning, understands everything that the man does, can feel all that is felt; it knows that Claire is important. It knows that if anything happened to Claire—particularly at his hands—Myrnin the man would be destroyed so absolutely that the monster would have the chance to rear its head and take over, at least for a period of time.

It knows that the key to its return to prominence is the attack of Claire Danvers.

_~x~_

"Myrnin?" Claire's voice calls through the laboratory as she rushes down the steps, taking care to avoid the rotted plank of wood that separates the stairs from the floor of the laboratory. For the past six months, Myrnin has been promising to fix it; as of yet, he hasn't, and Claire isn't going to hold her breath waiting for it to happen. Even a vampire would probably suffocate, it'll take that long to be fixed.

"Hello, dear Claire." Myrnin's standing in front of her before Claire can react, the shock causing her to spill a good proportion of the coffee in her left hand on the floor. "Now there was no need to waste the delicious coffee that you bought yourself…oh, no, wait, I smell the distinction between the coffees; that was _my_ coffee. Never fear, I shall force myself to drink the disgusting concoction you favour; I know that you feel wretched for spilling my drink on the floor—" Myrnin trails off as he notices the look on Claire's face.

"You've progressed from last month," Claire comments, a slight smile upon her lips. "Back then, you were just going straight for the angry idiot about the coffee face; today, I actually got a hello before you scared me!"

Claire hands Myrnin his—well, originally her—coffee, knowing that to protest and tell him that it's his fault that the coffee's on the floor is pointless; it never works normally, and all it does is put him in a strange mood, one that scares her. So she takes a sip of the half-empty coffee in her hand, wincing at the strength; Myrnin prefers a strong coffee, something Claire has grown to learn over the past months, but it's far too strong for her liking.

"The man within me has developed his social skills in order to appear more acceptable in this modern era; it does not mean that I feel that they are completely the right skills to have in every situation." Myrnin's response confuses Claire, as it usually does, so she ignores him. She moves towards the desk she usually uses in the right hand corner of the room, keen to see how one of her experiments has advanced over the past two days.

What she sees, however, isn't what she left.

"Why have you tampered with my experiment?" Claire half-yells across the room, Myrnin her intended target. She's irritated beyond belief, unable to comprehend why Myrnin would deliberately interfere with something she told him not to go within a metre of. For once, the intention was for her to do an experiment without Myrnin's help, to prove that she can do it…but he's destroyed that. He's tampered, and any success cannot be called solely her own.

Myrnin, as he usually does, succeeds in keeping a sort of semi-control as he responds. "You had used far too much of one variable, it was threatening the security of the rest of the laboratory—and experiments I'm working on that are _far_ more important than your little thing," he replies, but the nonchalance of his tone suggests to Claire that he's lying. He didn't feel that the laboratory was at risk; he just wanted to meddle.

So she tells him this. She throws word after word: daggers speeding across the room towards Myrnin. His expression doesn't falter as he stares, deadpan, at Claire as she gets into the swing of her tirade, gesticulating at the experiment—and, when she moves onto the fact that she feels crushed by Myrnin and his ego at times, herself—to try and emphasise her point. It takes until she screeches, "Myrnin, are you even _listening_ to me?" for him to move.

All through Claire's rant, Myrnin's been fighting his inner monsters, the demons which, in moments like this, threaten to overcome him more easily than any other time. When he feels threatened, particularly by someone who would be considered his subordinate, waves of insanity wash over him, threatening to pull him under in order for the threat to be removed. He tries to remember that being taken under would be worse in the long run as he wouldn't be able to get back, and just thinking of the only memory he has of Claire's face when she saw him turn insane is enough to keep him as Myrnin the man—just. Any further ranting, any further verbal (or indeed physical) attack from Claire may very well be enough to throw him over the edge. And, in all honesty, Myrnin doesn't know what would happen to any of them if that occurred. He has an inkling that his feelings for the girl would be exposed—but after that would be a mystery. Whether he killed her, whether he kept her a prisoner, to feed on and do with as he pleased, he doesn't know—he only knows that with Claire, the monster within would be strong enough to withstand the man's attempts to regain superiority for far too long a period of time.

He wouldn't be able to fight back to be who _he_ is until she was irrevocably lost to him.

"I'm very sorry, Claire," he says quietly, taking a few paces back from her in order to lower the chance of physical contact. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go visit Amelie. Please feel free to do as you please in my absence."

Myrnin rushes through the portal and into Amelie's front room before he can hear Claire reminding him that Amelie doesn't want visitors, not now she's helping Sam through his recuperation. He doesn't want to hear it, doesn't want another word to issue out of her mouth in his presence—not until he gets a lid on his insanity.

Little does he know that he won't achieve that for a long, _long_ time.

_~x~_

He returns to his laboratory three hours later, having been relaxed through arguing with Amelie. She didn't trust him enough to attend Sam, he however felt he had the more apt qualifications than the Goldman doctor so ignored her wishes, and then proceeded to ignore her yells in his ear. Only when she threatened to remove all funding did he look at her, yet only to inform her that Theo had given Sam the wrong dosage of the medicine, and therefore his recuperation period would be much longer than if Myrnin had the chance to look after the patient.

She silenced after that, speaking only to tell Myrnin to leave when his purpose was served.

As he walks through the portal, he heaves a sigh of relief as the silence greets him; to his ears, it's deafening, the only thing he can hear, and that's how he supposes his hearing is so good. _Anything_ other than silence, anything at all, is quieter than the sound of nothing—nobody understands this theory, of course, but Myrnin does, perfectly.

The silence means that Claire's gone, that he doesn't have to fight to keep control, and Myrnin takes advantage of being alone. To be alone is usually to be lonely, but today, to be alone is to be sane, to not run the risk of losing everything he holds dear to him through the actions of the person he holds the most dear. He falls to the floor and rocks himself slowly, breathing in deeply with every movement forwards, exhaling as he feels himself about to fall flat on his back; it relaxes him, even as the tears stream down his cheeks, and he thinks that perhaps, he's managed to get a lid on his insanity.

Then he hears the one sound that will break his control during this sensitive time, and he knows instinctively that all is lost: Claire's voice.

The pain that runs through him is enormous as he feels himself sliding down beneath the monster, feels the dregs of the control of his body draining from him—and into the monster. He's losing himself, for how long he doesn't know, and amidst the pain, there's fear, terrible fear. What will happen to him, to the laboratory, to _Claire_, he hasn't a clue; all he knows is that _he_ will be the passenger for the next immeasurable period of time, unable to influence the monster whatsoever. He'll be helpless…just like poor, little Claire.

"Myrnin?" she calls out, taking the last few steps down into the laboratory. "Myrnin, are you here? I left my phone—oh!" she calls out as she sees Myrnin suddenly standing in front of her, having moved from his rocking position to his feet within less than a second.

She should realise straight away that this isn't her Myrnin, that this _thing_ isn't the man she's falling for; she should know from one look into his eyes that he isn't the same person—whilst insanity is always present there, there's a difference between a man with a soul and one who doesn't—but she doesn't realise. Even as the monster smiles and takes a step closer to her, she doesn't realise, doesn't have alarm bells ringing in her head like she _should_.

Myrnin the man—because to call himself a man and the other thing a monster is the only way he knows how to differentiate—screams in frustration as he tries to warn Claire, tries to make her remember every single piece of advice he gave her to make sure that she wasn't taken in by his monstrous side: to check his eyes, to ask him the question (what do you love?) and, if not one hundred percent satisfied with the answers, _run_.

She hasn't done any of these whatsoever. She's grown too trusting of him, and Myrnin realises that this will be her—and ultimately his—downfall. His love for her, her love for him, it has endangered them both and made sure that they won't be making it out of this laboratory, not for the longest of times...and certainly not alive.

He can see the cogs working in her mind as she looks at him, a slight crease between her eyebrows, but it's too late, far too late; he knew the monster works fast, but this is a different league. Before she can even say his name or take a step backwards, he's on her, grabbing her hair and flinging her to the floor, a loud crack reverberating around the room as her elbow collides with the concrete floor.

"HELP!" she screeches as she tries to stagger to her feet, and Myrnin wants to kill her himself as she makes her next fatal flaw: she turns her back on the enemy.

He allows her to make it to the stairs, this being the monster's game—Myrnin can remember all those who fell down the trapdoor and how the monster would play with them before he consumed them—before he grabs her.

"You didn't think that I would allow you to _leave_, did you?" He whispers into her ear, his left hand tight over her mouth so that any sound she lets out is muffled. "Oh no, little Claire, you're _mine_—and nobody will ever have you again. Allow me to assure you that you will enjoy these last days of yours…though they may not be what you want." Myrnin laughs as he presses his lips against Claire's throat, his fangs extending just enough so that they connect with her membrane, the heat emitted from her coursing through his body.

She manages to shake her head, and Myrnin lifts his head, removing his hand from her mouth just enough for her to speak. "No chance, you're not getting away with this," she half-snarls, her anger overcoming her fear. "When I don't go home, someone will look for me, someone will tell Amelie, she'll know what you've done. She knows how…how you get at times—she'll connect the dots! I know she will."

Within half a second, he's turned her round so that she's facing him and can see the sadistic smile that's spreading across his face. "She's too busy with her little Sam to care about _you_," he tells her honestly, the insane side of him not keen on flowery, eloquent ways of putting this. "And even if she did notice you're gone, do you really think the first person she would turn to is _me_? I may be a monster, little girl, but the man you have fallen in love with most certainly is not—and that's the side that Amelie currently sees. _I_ am protected because of _him_. I must thank you for that, for, you see, your influence has helped him retain control over me for a longer period than what is usual. This has made me stronger…and now, the only way that Myrnin the man can return is through the thing that will destroy him entirely: your death."

All Claire can do is stare into space as he pulls her towards his bedroom, all fight taken out of her as she realises that she is going to die—and there is almost nothing she can do about it.

(She doesn't know what will happen before she dies, though, and perhaps that's best because if she knew, any and all thoughts of her Myrnin would be tarnished irreparably—even though she _knows_ that this isn't the man she needs in her life.)

_~x~_

He's fighting a losing battle, trapped inside a prison from which he cannot escape, but yet Myrnin continues to wrestle with the monster in order to escape—but he can't. He gives it his all, throws everything he has into overthrowing the insanity, yet it's impossible; the time it had to increase its strength has rendered it impossible for him to remove it from being the greater force of the two, at least until the monster _wants_ him to gain control. As this sub-ordinate creature, he feels everything that the monster does, knows everything it's planning on doing, and its plans…they sicken him. He's incapable of doing anything to prevent them, and so he tries to shut his (metaphorical) mind off from them, to prevent himself from having to imagine the horrors Claire will go through, but now they're in there, they're there to stay. There's no chance that they'll ever leave his mind—though it's arguable whether it's his mind or the monster's, since they're one in the same—but Myrnin doesn't think that he'll be alive that long to have to suffer through.

For now, though, he's in the predicament of being unable to do anything to save the girl—_woman_—he loves, of being the bystander in a situation he doesn't want to be within a million miles of, and if his heart could rip, it would be in tiny fragments. But it can't, because in reality, he isn't gone from his body, he's just lost control of his mind in a way that no other person alive today can understand.

(Nobody ever could, not really; the closest was the man who died when he was a child, the man who was shunned from society just as Myrnin did after him. The only person who could understand was his father…but he's dead now. Just as Myrnin will be, soon.)

_~x~_

She's left in Myrnin's bedroom for over an hour, and all the while she tries desperately to escape. It took her too long to realise the monster had overcome him, she knows that, and she hates Myrnin the _man_ with all her heart. If she hadn't fallen in love with him, she wouldn't have forced herself to see past the insanity that always rests in his eyes; she would have seen that he wasn't himself at all. Instead, she chose to ignore that part of him because she loves the man.

It just turns out that Myrnin the man is now under the control of Myrnin the monster, the cold-hearted, dangerous predator, who she cannot predict.

He's locked the portals off so that she cannot use them, her phone never works in this part of the laboratory, and it's out of charge anyway, and due to it being underground, there isn't the chance of opening a window to escape. Above her is a good two metres of soil before a layer of concrete, if not more, and not even a vampire could fight through that, let alone _her_. She can't sneak out of the laboratory passed him, not unless she wants to bring her fate forwards, so she's well and truly stuck.

Claire wonders how long he's planning on holding her hostage. More than a day or so and people will begin to get suspicious of the fact that she isn't anywhere that she should be, and therefore this place will be searched. She still won't be captured, due to how many hiding places Myrnin has, but perhaps it'll give her a little time free from the abuse the monster will give her—perhaps not. Perhaps he'll run away with her, under the ground, through the tunnels and caves that only Myrnin is aware of, destroying her until her heart gives in. She knows that the man will die with her, something which she feels slightly happy about given that it's his fault that she will meet her end, yet she also regrets it. It isn't _his_ fault that he's ravaged by a monster inside of him…but, conversely, it isn't her fault that he can't keep a lid on it.

As she thinks about this, the door slams into the wall, and in the doorway is Myrnin, a savage grin on his lips. This confirms that he's not the man she loves—he would _never_ look at her like this, as though she's nothing, not even worth living—but if she needs more proof, it's in his following actions.

He darts across the room and pushes her onto the bed, his hands at her shoulders to keep her down—not that it requires much force. She's nowhere near strong enough to even resist what he wants her to do, and he knows that, but Claire has the feeling that all he wants is to hurt her so that bruises will appear on her skin, marking her as _his_.

It makes her feel physically sick.

Their lips meet, but it isn't romantic in the slightest; he's forcing himself on her, and she can feel the sadistic shape of his lips as he forces his tongue into her mouth, ignoring her whimpered attempts to make him stop. As he does this, his hands roam her body, ripping and pulling at clothes until she's left in things which can hardly be considered to cover any modesty in the slightest.

"Please," she whispers as he—she can't call him Myrnin for no matter how much he looks like her Myrnin, he isn't—stops kissing her and moves his attention to her neck. "Don't hurt me, don't do anything that…that _he_ wouldn't do. You don't want to, not really, I know you, you _love_ me!" Please, please, don't do it."

He looks into her eyes for one short second, and with that look she knows that anything she will say is futile; he isn't listening. "If I'm your Myrnin, then why have you not called me by my name?" His words ring true in Claire's ears, and they're all that she can think about as his fangs rip into her throat, sending shockwaves, followed by sharp stabs of pain, through her body.

She wants to cry as he takes her blood, as he touches her and moves himself against her in ways that she's never felt before, but she doesn't. She resists. Her tears are reserved for Myrnin the man, not Myrnin the monster. He doesn't get to see that side of her.

_~x~_

Finally he leaves her, disappearing out of the bedroom without bothering to lock the door, her body bloody and dripping with sweat. She's shaking all over, her mind shot into pieces that _her_ Myrnin, her lovely, sweet, gentle, haunted man, could do such despicable things to a girl who didn't consent. He's left her with reminders all over her body, bite marks, scratch marks, trails of blood, but nothing's as bad as the sounds that her mind keeps replaying to itself over and over again: the sound of him laughing, his demands that she say what he wants, the tearing into her flesh. They're the sounds of torture, a specific torture by the shadow of the man who knows her the best out of every living thing on the planet, and Claire can't get them out of her mind.

She's weak from the blood loss, but also from the shock at how quick everything in her life has changed. What she loves has been ripped from her, what she hates has been epitomised in Myrnin. Her deepest hatred of vampires has been embodied in the person she loved the most—and she hates it. She hates how everything has been destroyed, just because he loves her, too.

That that's the explanation for the monster going after her is obvious. It knows how Myrnin feels, how she feels, and therefore it wants to destroy Myrnin the man as well as herself, a punishment for keeping the monster locked inside for so long.

As she sobs quietly to herself, Claire wraps her cardigan around herself, desperate to feel some sort of comfort and normality, because if she doesn't, she's scared that she'll go to pieces. Something gets into her head, however, an idea that she feels obliged to carry out because she knows how this story is going to end, and she needs to make sure that _he_ knows she doesn't blame him—not really.

She digs the paper and the pen out of the bottom of her rucksack and scribbles a short note, leaving it on the table she left a note on before, the third time that she ended up staying over.

_Myrnin,_

_I don't blame you, not really. It's not your fault that this happened to me._

_Don't hurt yourself_

_I love you,_

_Claire_

She squeezes her eyes shut as she leaves the piece of paper on the table before crossing the room and curling up in the corner, as far from the bed as possible. Any good memories from it have been taken by the monster who unleashed himself upon her on it.

The monster who meant that her blood covers the sheets—and it's not just from her neck.

Claire drops off to sleep slowly, allowing herself to fall into a world where she's not scared of Myrnin or anxious about the end of her life. She relishes these hours of peace and happiness, of normality and love, because she knows that she may never get to experience them again.

(As she sleeps, _he_ comes in and he stands over her, wondering just where he can take her now. It's getting dangerous, time wise, and Shane's already wondering whether he should call in Amelie…and so the monster needs to finish with the girl quickly.)

_~x~_

When she wakes, she isn't in the corner of Myrnin's bedroom; she's in the freezing tunnels beneath even the laboratory, and there isn't even an iota of light. It's a blanket of darkness that threatens to absorb her, but as Claire comes to her senses, she realises that her legs are spread apart and that her arms are tied above her head. The wall, whilst comforting in its solidity, digs into her bag, creating even more cuts and bruises, and it's even colder than the air around her. It contrasts with the heat of her body, causing her to shake, more from the cold than the fear of what he's planning on doing to her.

Her breathing increases with her heartbeat as she grows more and more scared that he's just left her down here to spend the last of her days alone, cold and without anything that could make her comfortable. It's a thought that has chance to grow within her mind, a seed that's given plenty of room to grow, because she estimates it as being almost four hours before he returns to her—though it could easily have just been four minutes.

There's a noise and a flicker of light as the man lights a match, the yellow glow of the fire at the end of the stick a blessing for Claire. It's entirely psychological but she can almost feel the heat it spreads across her numb body, and she's more thankful for the little that it allows her to see than she ever thought could be possible.

"You slept for a long time," he tells her, and Claire worries just how long she spent unconscious, before deciding that it doesn't really matter. "I had to hide you down here because your little friends insisted that Amelie search my laboratory for you." He smiles and snorts slightly, causing Claire to cower backwards as much as the wall allows. "I explained the blood away really rather easily, telling them of how _rough_ you like it. The boy looked sickened as I told him how you screamed for me, how you liked everything that I did—and you did, didn't you, little one?"

She shakes her head as vehemently as possible, pressing her lips together for fear that she'll say something she regrets.

He cocks an eyebrow slightly, then snorts once again. "Oh, are you sure about that, Claire? I know how much you wanted the man you love, you filthy whore." He points to her legs, she can just about make out the movement in the little light there is, and before she can stop him, he's touching the skin at the top of her left leg. "You left them spread apart for me; it shows what you want."

She doesn't dare correct him, doesn't dare tell him that she feared what he would do if she moved a muscle; she merely stares at him for as long as she can. There's no trace of _her_ man inside his eyes; it's just cold, empty madness—evil.

As best she can, she blocks out the next immeasurable period of time, refusing once again to let him cry. He doesn't deserve to see her like that, she thinks; he isn't anyone she cares for. Only people she cares for get to see her cry.

"You need not worry, little one," he whispers into her ear as he stops moving, his hair half on her face. It's so strange, this happening, because she's had this exact position before with the man she loves—it's just that this _isn't_ the man she loves, though they're identical. "It will all be over soon. I don't have the time to keep a hostage, and to be frank, having control of this body is not what I remember it to be, not now that I cannot kill. Plus," he begins, grinning against Claire's cheek, "you smell—and taste—_divine._"

"Get off of me!" she screams, using her body to try and thrust upwards to get him to get off of her, given that he didn't untie her hands. They've been twisted up above her head for far too long now, and now the pain's worn off, they're simply numb, dead weights that are no help to what she wants.

Her actions don't budge the man an inch; instead, they seem to amuse him as his hands reach down to touch her hips, pressing the bones extremely gently. "You're trying to get _more_ from me?" he questions, though he knows that this isn't the case. "Let me guess, you want it from a different angle? You humans, so _fussy_…but no. I refuse to acquiesce to your request—though I certainly will have you as I kill you. I've never done that before, and it could be quite interesting…" he trails off, musing the thought to himself and Claire suddenly feels sick. This isn't what she wanted, never—but this isn't what Myrnin wanted, either, she knows that.

"Just kill me, please," she begs, wanting nothing more than for this to be over. She'd rather face death than face him again, face what he has in store for her for the third time—or maybe it's more than that, now, she can't remember. She doesn't _want_ to remember.

"Oh no, little one, you pushed me down this track of thought, therefore you're going to enjoy this," he replies, laughing once more. "But just so you can't try and kick me again—it was rather obvious what you attempted to do before, dear; subtlety is not your strong point—I'm going to do _this—_"

Claire screams out in what she can only describe as agony, the worst feeling of her entire life—worse even than his bites and his attacks earlier—because she's never felt anything comparable before. His fingers press into her hips too far, far too deep for her weak bones to withstand the pressure. They buckle under his touch, rendering her unable to move her legs, as well as sending wave after wave of incomparable pain through her. She wants to black out, to allow herself the relief of unconsciousness, but she knows that he'll leave her death until she's awake to experience it, and she doesn't want to drag out this agony that's threatening to consume her.

"That's better," he comments, positioning himself as he speaks. "Now, dear, this may _hurt_ because of what I just did, but don't worry! It won't last long…and you did want it, after all."

She pretends not to hear him, but inside, she's fracturing apart even further. She won't even be dust by the end of this, at this rate.

_~x~_

Finally he stops, and takes three steps away from her as he surveys her body. She realises only now that he must have lit a torch on the wall, because she can see his face, not that she wants to. Her eyes squeeze together in order to block him out from her vision, and the laugh that's come to haunt her in these past hours—or however long it's been, she hasn't a clue—echoes around the cave.

"You're going to die—and the man inside me is as well; it's a double blow for one desperate girl's neck, which I think is a bargain," the monster comments, and Claire feels, rather than sees, him moving towards her.

He brushes the hair back from her neck, and still Claire keeps her eyes shut. "You've been very brave, and actually, really rather good. If it wasn't so _boring_, keeping one human, I'd have you for the rest of your human life, mark my words."

"Get on with it," she whispers through gritted teeth, the anticipation of his hand upon her neck sending shivers through her. She just wants him to do it, to stop waiting and trying to make her nervous. All she wants is for this to be over, for this never to occur again—for her life to end.

He obliges without another word, and before she can even gather her thoughts, he's taking away the last of what keeps her alive. For her to slip into a sort-of daze takes less than ten seconds, and within another ten, her heart's slowed right down, slower than it's ever beat.

"You were so lovely," the monster murmurs, and these are the last words that Claire hears—and that the monster says.

She slumps backwards against the wall at the same time as he falls to the floor, the internal struggle between him and the dormant man suddenly a raging battle.

_~x~_

The fury, the rage, the incandescent anger at the fact that he's killed Claire surges through Myrnin the man. It returns him to his pre-argument control over the monster, a battle between the monster and the man within his head taking only seconds to be completed. He wins…but he wishes he hadn't.

The pain and suffering he felt locked inside is nothing compared to what it's like to have control of a body, especially the body that did all of this to the innocent girl lying on the floor.

"You should never have fallen in love with me—I'm cursed, not worthy of your love," Myrnin whispers, tears dripping down his cheeks and rolling onto his clothes as he reaches out to move a piece of hair from Claire's face. He doesn't want to look at her like this, so he removes his shirt and places it over her, desperate to hide the evidence of what _he_ did.

He can't deny that he did it; whilst it's another part of him, it was still _him_ that attacked her, that did this to her, that killed her and left her crumpled body on the floor. At least part of him wanted to do this, maybe all of him at one point, and that's worthy of death at least.

Really, he thinks, it isn't; he deserves to be locked up, to be tortured and mistreated as he did Claire, but he doesn't think that he could bear that. He's not as strong as Claire, he's a coward, and anyway, nobody would understand that it wasn't _him_ who did this. It was the monster.

(Well, Amelie would, but Amelie's one person, and she doesn't care enough about him to make the distinction between his monstrous side and his human side clear to the world.)

_~x~_

He finds the can of petrol he kept down here when Ada inhabited the next cave along, just incase she required to be destroyed at any point (not that he would have done it) and he takes it back to Claire. Her body's still, just as one would expect a dead body to be, and just looking at the expression on her face makes him want to rip his face off, to claw through the skin and to pull his brain out.

That's not permanent for him, however. He'd just come back again tomorrow and have to repeat the process. No, what he's about to do is permanent.

In his pocket is the phone Amelie made him promise to carry, and he takes it out slowly, holding it heavily in his hand. On it are two numbers: Amelie's and Claire's. Only the first one is anyone who can answer now.

_We're under the laboratory. Please don't judge me too harshly for what the monster did._

_Forever your friend_

_-Myrnin_

He sends the text before throwing the phone across the cave, hearing it land with a soft thud on the floor. Then, tears swimming in his eyes, he proceeds to douse Claire's body with the petrol, leaving only the bare minimum to cover his clothes. He burns easier than humans do, and anyway, he deserves to go through more pain. She shouldn't have any of it, even in death.

Slowly, Myrnin lifts the torch from the bracket on the wall and immediately his hand catches alight. Though it hurts, he throws the torch onto Claire, watching as her body is engulfed with the dancing, shining flames. He watches as they spread from her legs right up to her head, and smiles slightly as her hair catches fire. It looks like she's wearing a crown of fire, which is something he thinks she should have; she's always been a queen in his eyes. Now, she's getting the literal crown in her last moments.

Myrnin barely notices as the flames spread up his left arm and across his chest, because the pain doesn't affect him, not now, not when he can watch the beauty of the burning of the girl he loves. She's even more beautiful when she's alight, he thinks; the flames add a certain glow to her skin that no human can have in life, and as the flames spread, the colours change, from nearly white, to yellow, to orange, to even sparks of red and purple as chemicals on her skin are set on fire.

As the flames ravage his body, Myrnin falls to his knees, and in the seconds before the flames touch his ears, he hears both the sound of his phone ringing, and the sound of footsteps at the far end of the tunnel, as well as a call of his name. Before he has chance to respond—not that he'd want to—the fire spreads to his nose and mouth, making his tongue sparkle all those colours that Claire's body did.

He falls forwards as he feels his body burning out, though he knows that when the fire ends, there will be only ash remaining, and he hopes that he's touching Claire.

If he is, he doesn't know; he can't feel anything.

(He isn't. He's not close enough to touch her, and perhaps that's the most symbolic thing about their relationship: they were always just that inch apart; without the inch, they would have been perfect together.)

_~x~_

By the time Amelie reaches them, her appearance dishevelled, her expression betraying the worry she would never dare express with words, it's too late.

He's a pile of ash and she's a mess of bits of bone and sinew, and it's not the fitting end to the scientist and his assistant.

It's no sort of end for them at all.

* * *

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